Monitise Looks to Double Revenue for 4th Consecutive Year

LONDON -- Doubling your revenue in one year is impressive, but three years on the trot is outstanding. That's what Monitise (LSE: MONI.L) , the mobile payment outfit, has just done. What's more, it's aiming for another sales double this year.

The actual increase in sales last year was 136%, with revenue rising from 15.3 million pounds to 36.1 million pounds. Gross margins increased, too, from 62% to 66%. Monitise is feeling confident enough to predict that sales for the current year will be a minimum of 70 million pounds, and that gross margins should exceed 70% by the end of the period.

Monitise also had news of a new contract win with the Hong King division of the Bank of China. Other recent contract gains, closer to home, have included HSBC (LSE: HSBA.L) and the Co-operative Bank.

However, looking at the bottom line, Monitise's performance has been less impressive in recent years. There are heavy upfront costs for setting up new contracts, and this has meant continued losses, despite the rapid increase in sales. The loss before tax was 16.9 million pounds, down marginally from the previous year's 17.2 million pounds.

There are signs that profitability is not that far off, however. Profits from Monitise's live operations, with the likes of Royal Bank of Scotland (LSE: RBS.L) and Visa (NYSE: V) , were 10.6 million pounds. Monitise is predicting it will be profitable at the EBITDA level by September 2013, one quarter earlier than its previous estimate, while analysts are expecting Montise to break even in the year ending June 2014.

On the cash front, Monitise looks relatively secure for now. It had net cash of 10 million pounds as at June 30, and raised a further 22 million pounds from shareholders in August.

Alastair Lukies, Group CEO of Monitise, said:

Our strategy centres on being the enabling technology platform of choice for financial institutions and payments companies worldwide, helping them to defend and extend their position as money becomes increasingly digitised. It is critical that our platform is bank grade and we invest to ensure it meets the highest standards. We have a fantastic team of people who uniquely blend experience in banking, payments and innovation. It is important that we continue to attract and retain the best talent.

Monitise shares rose 1% to 33 pence on the release on the results, valuing the company at 377 million pounds. It's been a roller-coaster ride for shareholders in the past five years. The shares joined AIM at 22 pence back in 2007, but dipped as low as 3 pence during 2009, before making a strong recovery.

Comments from our Foolish Readers

Help us keep this a respectfully Foolish area! This is a place for our readers to discuss, debate, and learn more about the Foolish investing topic you read about above. Help us keep it clean and safe. If you believe a comment is abusive or otherwise violates our Fool's Rules, please report it via the Report this Comment icon found on every comment.